The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to soft hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) operation.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
Wireless communication may be subject to loss or distortion of packets during transmission, which may result in a failure to decode packets received by a UE. Some wireless systems may incorporate error-correction techniques to improve reliability. For example, a transmitter may repeatedly send a lost packet or some modified version of it. A receiver may combine the original packet with the newly received packet to improve the chances of successful packet decoding. This may require a data storage component, such as a buffer. As data transmission rates continue to increase, the buffer power usage and physical dimensions of the buffer may increase to support storage of the larger amounts of data associated with increased transmission rates.